You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
(Göttingen) 25.vii.24
Dear Professor,
Ever since your kind reception of Frau P. from Königsberg I have been meaning to tell you about this case, but unfortunately the clandestine undermining tactics on the part of her husband, without
doubt a severe neurotic himself, compelled me to send his wife home to him—which I would have done straightaway and not just after the first months, if the analysis had not made so rapid and promising a start, so that I was not willing to give up the hope of dissuading him from interfering. After all he had begged B. L. with tears in his eyes to be allowed to consult you!
It was a case of severe hysteria at its zenith. The fact that she was supposed to be suffering from an obsessional neurosis can be explained perhaps by the state of sullen obstinacy to which the woman had been driven by a year and a half of Professor Sch. as well as by her husband, who had reduced her to silence and treated her as if she were mad. It happened in this way: she came out in Sch.'s presence with a memory which was poisoning her life, namely, the story of a rabbi with whom she lodged while at school, and who had sexually misused her from her sixth to her thirteenth year. It is certainly true that years later a doctor, who was carrying out a medical examination, informed her mother that the child must have been assaulted. But Sch. demanded firm proofs of her assertions, and let fly at her because she was so debased as to accuse an honourable man in this way. After this she refused to speak to anyone (it is interesting to note that this led her to pursue extensive language studies as a hysterical substitute).
From the time of that experience on there occurred regular repetitions of confused states of mind which produced in her a paralysing passivity and which forced her to joyless sexual surrender. From time to time even during lively conversations she would lapse into short spells of unconsciousness in both speech and gesture, which revealed a similar state o